Articles

Challenged to confirm or deny the need for vaccination, Churchill took the common-sense approach: it depends on the evidence, and what one wishes to prevent.

During Celia’s childhood she spent time with her grandfather at Chartwell and Chequers. At Chartwell, Celia and her sister slept in a room above Churchill’s. The girls would go in to say good morning to Winston and Clementine in their separate bedrooms. She says “we saw a great deal of our grandparents.”

All are all now firmly established in the great pantheon of the House of Commons. All experienced failure, engendered controversy, still do, and always will. In death, all passion spent, they can be evaluated for the characters that lay beneath their politics. And, in common, a deep seam of basic decency can be found.

Why does Churchill still matter today? Because he dragged history “a little closer to our own times… a guide in present difficulties.”

Versailles is often viewed as short-sighted and vindictive, laying the foundation for future calamity. But Lloyd George was under enormous pressure to satisfy clamant allies whose mood was either deeply angry (France) or unrealistically messianic (America). At home, the Tories wanted a harsh peace. Churchill, still a Liberal and characteristically magnanimous, argued vainly for milder treatment of Germany.

The first thing to know about Lloyd George’s premiership is that it destroyed the Liberal Party. Internecine fighting opened the door for the Labour Party (which joined the wartime coalition). A few years later, moving from minor third-party status, Labour formed a government. The Liberals would never govern again.

“Reilly considered Churchill the only useful British politician in the anti-Bolshevik cause. Shortly before his death he told a friend: ‘Only one man is really important, and that is the irrepressible Marlborough [WSC]. I have always remained on good terms with him….His ear would always be open to something sound.’”

Roosevelt always favored a “Germany First” strategy, even after Pearl Harbor. This is shown by his “disinformation” campaign that Germany was really behind the Japanese attack. He intended using Hitler’s alleged involvement in Pearl Harbor as a pretext for war, even if Germany did not declare war on the U.S.

Channon, a superb diarist, had an extraordinary ability to capture and present the interesting. One can only admire the energy it must have taken simply to make hand-written daily, mostly lengthy, entries, amidst the social whirlwind in which he lived. Two thousand pages in, and we are left yearning for more. Luckily a third, and final, installment is due out later this year.

There’s a general rule in biography, as in journalism, that knocking copy ought to be better researched than ordinary writing. But it is not one that Ali observes. He makes so many basic factual errors that Churchill’s reputation emerges unscathed from this onslaught.

"This volume is part of a series aimed, as the publishers assure us, at 'young adults.' At the same time it is intended as a 'reference guide.' After spending some time with the book I have trouble in seeing the value that young adults will gain from it. The book is primarily set out in alphabetic, encyclopedic format, with entries presented two columns to a page, along with an index and a bibliography. The result is a curiously unbalanced mixture."

Thirty years ago, we made a day-long visit to the Chartwell library. We were booksellers, and had encountered copies of the books Sir Winston’s son had removed. Invariably they contained a small oval label reading: “From the Library of Sir Winston Churchill.” We were anxious to know their origins, and how they fitted into the original scheme of things at Chartwell’s library.